![]() Among these two strategies, the seedlings need more moisture for germination and early survival. The sprouts are an extension of the parental plant while seedlings are completely individualistic to any other plant. ![]() īig sagebrush can also reproduce through sprouts, which shoot up from the underground rhizome. The fruits are seed-like and have a small amount of hairs on the surface. The small yellow flowers are in long, loosely arranged tubular clusters. The plant flowers in the late summer or early fall. The leaves are covered with fine silvery hairs. The leaves-attached to the branches at the axillary nodes-are wedge-shaped, 1–3 centimetres ( 1⁄ 2– 1 + 1⁄ 4 inches) long and 0.3–1 cm broad, with the wider outer tips divided into three lobes (hence the scientific name tridentata). It is an evergreen shrub, keeping some of its leaves year-round (although it loses many of them in the late summer). The taste is bitter and, together with the odor, serves to discourage browsing by many herbivores. The species has a strong pungent fragrance (especially when wet) due to the presence of camphor, terpenoids and other volatile oils. Sagebrush is generally long-lived once it makes it past the seedling stage, and can reach ages of over 100 years. Big sagebrush that is over a meter tall is an indicator of arable land, because it prefers deep, basic soils. A deep taproot 1–4 m ( 3 + 1⁄ 2–13 ft) in length, coupled with laterally spreading roots near the surface, allows sagebrush to gather water from both surface precipitation and the water table several meters beneath. It is also useful as firewood.īig sagebrush is a coarse, many-branched, pale-grey shrub with yellow flowers and silvery-grey foliage, which is generally 0.5–3 metres ( 1 + 1⁄ 2–10 feet) tall. Native Americans used the plant medicinally. It is especially important to game animals during the winter. Sagebrush provides food and habitat for a variety of species, such as sage grouse, pronghorn antelope, grey vireo, pygmy rabbit, and mule deer. Several major threats exist to sagebrush ecosystems, including human settlements, conversion to agricultural land, livestock grazing, invasive plant species, and wildfires. The range extends northward through British Columbia's southern interior, south into Baja California, and east into the western Great Plains of New Mexico, Colorado, Nebraska, and the Dakotas. The vernacular name "sagebrush" is also used for several related members of the genus Artemisia, such as California sagebrush ( Artemisia californica).īig sagebrush and other Artemisia shrubs are the dominant plant species across large portions of the Great Basin. Seriphidium vaseyanum (Rydb.) W.A.WeberĪrtemisia tridentata, commonly called big sagebrush, Great Basin sagebrush or (locally) simply sagebrush, is an aromatic shrub from the family Asteraceae, which grows in arid and semi-arid conditions, throughout a range of cold desert, steppe, and mountain habitats in the Intermountain West of North America.Seriphidium tridentatum (Nutt.) W.A.Weber.
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